Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Smoking Guns

As
politicians in Washington slow-dance to the Second Amendment, elsewhere in American
culture a different music about gun control is being heard.

On
the Daily Show, sportscaster Bob Costas tells Jon Stewart about the uproar over
his mild comments linking gun use to football violence, while a New York Times business columnist fills
his space with 15 shooting death reports across the country in the past week.

The
struggle over the lethal effects of a legal product is beginning to resemble a
decades-long effort to make millions aware of cigarette dangers and suggest the
way forward may lie less in sweeping legislation than in small steps to curtail
its use and, most important, heighten public awareness of the dangers.

Just
as tobacco lobbyists forestalled legislative action against smoking for
decades, the firearms makers’ creatures of the NRA have the financial and
electoral clout to limit sweeping gun reform. Meanwhile, local smoking bans
were being met at first with outrage but slowly gained public acceptance as
evidence of their efficacy accumulated.

By all
means, Congress should push the efforts of Joe Biden and even more so those of
Dianne Feinstein, but as they are being slowed by silly side shows such as
whether the President is an avid skeet shooter, the long-term return to sanity
about American guns may parallel the cigarette story.